Baek Kang-hyeon (11), who drew the nation’s attention by entering Seoul Science High School in March at the age of ten, left the school for gifted children after just one semester. In a phone interview with the Kyunghyang Shinmun on August 20, Baek’s father, Baek Dong-gi (63) claimed that his son dropped out because he could no longer handle the constant verbal abuse from the other students at the school. Baek Dong-gi informed the school after he found out about the harassment, but according to Baek, the school tried to stop him from disclosing the issue.

Earlier on August 19, Baek Kang-hyeon posted a video on his YouTube channel and announced, “I dropped out of Seoul Science High School on August 18.” He said, “When I told my father I was quitting school, he willingly approved of my decision.” He also shared his plans to work hard to prepare for the CSAT while taking Taekwondo lessons and doing things he enjoyed like composing music and creating board games.

The next day, his father posted a video on the same YouTube channel claiming that he received a threatening e-mail, which made him shake with rage. He mentioned that the day after his son announced his departure from the school, he received an e-mail of groundless slander and threats from the mother of another student at the school. He said he would expose the school violence that his son suffered at the Seoul Science High School.

The following is an interview of Baek Kang-hyeon’s father, Baek Dong-gi.

Q. Since when was your son a target of school violence?

A. Kang-hyeon entered the Seoul Science High School at a very early age. He was six years younger than the other boys in his grade, and he was also physically much smaller. Since he was young, he also lacked knowledge. At first, the other students looked at Kang-hyeon with curiosity, but they began bullying him after the midterm exams in May.

Q. How did they bully him?

A. They pounded the boy’s self-esteem into the ground. They constantly said things like “A boy like you coming here to the Seoul Science High School is playing a trick on all the people.” They particularly have a lot of group projects and presentations at the Seoul Science High School, and they would say things like “If he is in our group, our group’s ruined,” and “We’re completely done for if he (Kang-hyeon) is in our group, because it’s the same as missing one person,” with Kang-hyeon there within earshot. When conducting the group projects, the other students did not give Kang-hyeon a chance to speak and told him to sit still and not do anything. It didn’t happen just one or two times, but they constantly treated him in this manner. Since they forced him to just sit there next to them while they worked on the group project, Kang-hyeon would look into his smartphone. When he did that, they turned him into a bad boy, accusing him of looking at his phone and playing games. They were the ones who wouldn’t talk to him and who treated him as if he were invisible. They even swore at Kang-hyeon on the website, DC Inside, calling him things like “that idiot, dummy, dumb a##, bastard who doesn’t know how to do anything.”

Q. Was it a handful of students bullying your son or a large number of students?

A. Two students led the harassment, and the other students laughed and went along with them when they teased him or turned a blind eye.

Q. How did you respond?

A. I found out about the situation in May after the midterms. Kang-hyeon cried painful tears as he told me about it. He said he was having such a tough time that he thought he would die. As soon as I heard about it, I went straight to the school. I was going to find the bully who defamed my son on DC Inside by reporting him to the police, and as for the school violence, I told the school, but the school tried to stop me from reporting the incident. They said that they would make sure that such incidents didn’t occur again and suggested that we just bury the matter. At the time, Kang-hyeon really wanted to go to school, and he was willing to do whatever he could to graduate from Seoul Science High School. I thought that if we made a fuss over the issue, he wouldn’t be able to go to the school. So we had no choice but to follow the school’s advice.

Q. How did the school respond afterwards?

A. Since the older boys didn’t want Kang-hyeon in their groups and since Kang-hyeon was also nervous about group projects, I asked the school to let him do a solo presentation even if he received zero points for group projects. But the school said they couldn’t do that. They said they couldn’t change the entire school system just because of Kang-hyeon.

Q. Did the situation improve afterwards?

A. After we informed the school, the students stopped directly bullying him. But the boy became a complete outsider. Not a single child came up to talk to him all day. It was too much for a child to handle.

Q. Was there a reason why he decided to quit school?

A. When I asked my son about school life, he said it was okay and that the older boys were good to him, so I thought things had improved after that. But I recently found out that that wasn’t the case. They had a lot of presentations they had to give in English. After the second semester started a few days ago, Kang-hyeon said, “I think I would be able to go to school if they just let me do the English presentations by myself,” and begged me to make that possible. He said that if I could just solve the English issue, then that he would like to graduate from the Seoul Science High School. I went to the school again because he said that that was his wish. But it was no use. I received the answer, “We can’t change the school system just for Kang-hyeon alone. Have Kang-hyeon adjust to the system here. Overcoming that is also part of education.” After that, Kang-hyeon told me he wanted to quit. I held him tight. I still wanted to end everything so that it looked like Kang-hyeon had enjoyed his school life, but the boy was so skinny, we couldn’t shoot a video. He weighed 27 kg when he entered the school, but his weight had dropped to 22 kg. We created a video with a picture he had taken when he was happy before entering the school. I knew that Kang-hyeon didn’t want to hear people say, “Look at him. They said he was a genius, but he left because he couldn’t keep up with the schoolwork,” when he dropped out, so I wanted him to forget the nightmare and just end everything as a good memory.

Q. Why did you decide to make it public?

A. As soon as we posted the video (about Kang-hyeon leaving the school), I received an e-mail telling me that if I didn’t delete the video, they would tell the world that my son was the last in his class and that he wasn’t able to solve a single problem in all the subjects. Kang-hyeon’s grades were in the bottom half of the class, but it wasn’t like he got zero marks and couldn’t solve a single problem. Even before he quit school, there were a lot of malicious comments on YouTube. I thought that if we didn’t make the issue public, then we would continue to receive threats and malicious comments whenever we posted a video on YouTube. I wanted to break that chain.

Q. How is Kang-hyeon doing?

A. We’re letting him play a little. Unlike before, his eyes have lost focus, and he has no desire to do anything. We would like to take him to a psychiatrist, but we can’t afford it.

Q. What are his academic plans?

A. Since he dropped out, he will have to take the (high school) equivalency test and prepare for the CSAT.

Q. Do you have any plans to send him to another school?

A. No.